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Sleep and technology

On Thursdays La Serpiente goes to school early, for an extra half hour in the gym before the school day begins. Because of this, I get up extra early on those days to roust her from bed.

Except today, she woke me up at 5am by crawling into our bed, and I could only get back to sleep by crawling into her bed, and then I woke up at 7:50, 25 minutes after she was meant to be deposited at school.

Oops.
Thankfully, my wife had got up early and taken her to school, so all was right with the world, and I could get on with the exciting task of being on phone calls all morning.

My wife and the friends who have been staying with us went off to Home Depot, to buy various exciting things like scissors, a thermometer for our bedroom that connects via WiFi to the thermostat in our living room, and some duct tape to fix the bottom of our armchair.

It’s been good having our friends visit as they are practically minded (which helps with drilling holes in things, rearranging furniture in the optimum formation, and figuring out all the other useful things we lack the cognitive power for after some time in this house. Sadly they flew back to Australia this evening, so we don’t have the ability to rely on them any more (for a while, at least).

Our thermostat is also kind of interesting. It’s attached to the Internet, so you can control it from anywhere in the world, and it is smart enough that it can be programmed to heat the house differently in the day to the evening. On the other hand, our furnace just pumps out hot air from the basement through a series of heating ducts, so if the thermometer in the living room says it’s cool, it carries on heating the bedroom even when that’s too warm. Hence our extra thermometer upstairs.

This makes it quite a cool toy, but also something to stress out upon, because I’m not sure if the extra customisation features are set up correctly, or if I’ve done something wrong. With a regular, dumb thermostat this wouldn’t matter, but I’m not sure if this has made me happier or not.

Perhaps when I have my smart smoke alarms and security cameras installed, I’ll be happier.